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An Italian company developed a new safe and accurate indoor localization system.

Country of Origin: Italy
Reference Number: TOIT20161024001
Publication Date: 22 February 2018

Summary

The Italian company operating in industrial automation systems developed an innovative, safe and smart indoor localization system. It allows to know the position of people or objects with a few centimeters precision and high accuracy, using the ultrasound technology.  Based on an algorithm which enables to obtain a distinct signal, they are interested in technical and research cooperation agreements for further development. Central European countries and Russia are the market targets.

Description

This company, established in 1994 in the north of Italy, focused on automation, windows industrial machines, oil & gas, renewable energies and management of software.
Since its foundation, this company has created an independent R&D laboratory to study new technologies for all divisions. The laboratory collaborates with the most prestigious Italian and international universities. After years of research, the laboratory has developed a new technology using ultrasound waves to localize people or object indoor.
The technology responded at first to a need coming from a specific target, the hospital environment, and to a need to identify the location of equipment inside a structure.
The localization function uses, adapts and improves different technologies available at the state of the art for indoor localization. Today, the most common competitors are technologies based on radio frequency waves.
Based on an algorithm which enables to obtain a clear and distinct signal (sound), this technology needs a structure composed of a hardware component on one hand, and a software on the other. Unlike the hardware one, the front end can be of different types: applications (app) installed on different devices, including smartphones.
This system uses one simple antenna and one tag for each target to be localized, so to be as much flexible as possible, the company designed 3 different antennas and 3 different tags for a large range of applications. Their main peculiar features are described here below:
• One type of high precision antenna to localize people and objects indoor with few centimeters precision;
• One type of high waterproof precision antenna to localize people and objects with a few centimeters precision inside sensitive and particular areas (such as hospitals);
• One type of low precision antenna to approximately know the indoor position of people and objects;
• One type of high precision tag to be used with a high precision antenna;
• 2 types of low precision tag to be used with a low precision antenna.
This company successfully tested the object tracking system inside hospitals.
Potential application fields could be the sectors of agro-food, automotive, transport and logistics, services and retail, textile and fashion.
The research team is looking for industrial partners to identify new potential applications and to develop new methods suitable for different higher resolution localizations also in other locations.

Advantages and Innovations

The market of indoor localization systems is growing. At present, radio frequency technology does not ensure high accuracy.  Ultrasound technology, increases precision and does not require a strong wireless network infrastructure.
The advantages of this kind of technology are:
• People or object localization with a precision of 10 cm,
• Hospital application, because ultrasound technology can be used without restrictions as it is considered safe,
• Low power consumption technology. A tag battery life can be about 5 years long,
• Very versatile technology. This type of localization can be used for a lot of applications: namely hospital items, office items, user friendly.

Stage Of Development

Under development/lab tested

Requested partner

This company is searching for two types of partners: research cooperation agreement and technical cooperation agreement to find complementary competences and know-how sharing in order to install and test the localization system in a real environment, to find bugs and to improve technology. The research laboratory, accredited by the Italian Ministry of Education, will share its main common task to test and develop the new technology, in particular in hospitals and in storage areas like supermarkets or similar. It would be possible to localize shopping carts to figure out which lane generates longer permanence time and thus offering potential benefits to marketing strategy. 
Ideal partners should have high skills in system installation and maintenance. They should be able to catch client’s requests and to filter them in order to identify interesting and useful developments.

Cooperation offer is closed for requests